


bind with grout

by arbitrarily



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-23
Updated: 2011-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-22 23:40:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>a confrontation in confined space (the bathroom smells like soap and him and her).</p>
            </blockquote>





	bind with grout

**Author's Note:**

> Written spring 2009, namely after the bathroom scene between Jack and Juliet in 5.11.

  
we’re rotten fruit  
we’re damaged goods

what the hell, we’ve got nothing left to lose

( _backdrifts. (honeymoon is over.)_ , radiohead)

 

 

 

There is a line of black mold growing between the cracks of the linoleum tiles that frame the corner of the sink.

This does not surprise her.

This place is a perfect breeding ground for anything and everything of a toxic nature.

Juliet stands there for a full minute while Jack finishes his shower. She does not say a word. She rests her back against the panel of her door and her elbow brushes the faux gold handle as she crosses her arms before her chest. The handle is warm. Everything here is warm.

Jack makes noises in the shower. It isn’t a song or a melody that he hums, but just a low tuneless sound from between his lips. She thinks there is something distinctly masculine about it, and maybe, maybe another time she would have found it endearing. Maybe another time.

She thinks she hates him a little now, and that part is easy.

The water turns off.

 

 

 

(“Juliet, I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” he said.

“I’m not asking for your help. Jack,” she said. 

“You made it pretty clear you weren’t interested,” she said).

 

 

 

She kisses him first. This is important. Juliet kisses Jack first and there is this terrifying skip of a pause where it is just Juliet, her hands clenched at her sides, and her mouth open and gaping over his.

The stubble of his chin bites against her jawline and it might have been here that she considers this all to be a horrible mistake –

(But no, probably not. These things don’t work like that. Regret and the naming of people and places and events, transgressions, as mistakes doesn’t happen until you are safely housed in the  _after_. And then you look. And then you look back and maybe you cringe and say, “that was a mistake I shouldn’t have done that it was a mistake.”)

She kisses him first but before that they stand there silent.

She has crossed the room at this point and his space is hers and hers, his. There is symmetry in that but the shower has left the room too humid, Juliet’s chest is too tight, and she does not have the presence of mind to recognize its beauty.

They stand in an unspoken mutual stalemate. She hates him maybe more than a little. He came back. He came back he came back but in order to come back you have to leave first.

So she kisses him. 

She kisses him because he came back and because he deserves to be punished too.

 

 

 

(“I came back here because I care. I came back here because I was trying to save you,” he said.

“We didn’t need saving,” she said. 

“We’ve been fine for three years.”)

 

 

 

The very first time she kissed him – in the jungle, on a hill, dirt and the breeze caught in her hair – it had been as though on a dare.

The second time it felt as inevitable as the push and the pull of an accident.

This time it feels desperate.

Her lower lip rests below his and her upper above his and he does not move. Jack grips the edge of the sink and she knows if she were to look the knuckles would be white and maybe there is a triumph to be found in that fact alone. She doesn’t touch him but she kisses him with an open mouth.

And then he kisses her in return.

A jerk of his head and his bottom lip, the edge of his teeth, catches her lip and he is kissing her back, sloppy. His nose presses into the curve of her cheekbone and her eyes alternate between open and shut and open and shut – he tastes like mint and coffee, like nothing, nothing, skin and muscle, his tongue under hers, over, he tastes like a man.

His hand leaves the sink and presses flat against the small of her back, over her clothes first, and then under. Jack’s fingers are sticky with sweat and maybe she shudders – his palm, his hand, his fingerprints, her skin.

Their hips collide before she finally touches him. And then her fingers do little more than catch at the thin fabric of his t-shirt while his catch at the waistband of her jeans.

(Their kisses – the first and then the second – had always been of a chaste nature. It was his mouth and her mouth, both their lips pursed and closed then pressed. They kissed without commitment, and she realizes that now. They kissed each other like maybe they didn’t mean it; there were no tongues to betray them, no wet slick of spit, no risk of the sharp clank of teeth to teeth – he was never once inside her.

She gets that now).

His skin is still warm and pink, damp from the shower. Her hand slips below the collar of his t-shirt, down, to rest at the base of his neck and Juliet has the ridiculous thought that they are doing things out of order. He stood naked before her, he got dressed, and now, now, now –

Nothing makes sense here. That should not be a surprise either. That should never come as a surprise.

 

 

 

(“You came back here for you,” she said. “At least do me the courtesy of telling me why.”

“I came back because I was supposed to.”

“Supposed to do what?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well then. You better figure it out.”)

 

 

 

He drops the towel.

The edge of the porcelain sink is painful against the left side of her hip and he drops the towel. They kiss, the sounds of their mouths colliding and then separating noisy against the tile and the glass, and with the hand resting just above her ass he guides her hips to his.

She does not say his name and he does not say hers. They don’t say anything, but his hand catches in her hair and hers might rest above his heart and he drops the towel and she can feel him, Juliet can feel him hard against her.

Juliet makes a fist around his cock and Jack sighs like it hurts, like it’s sad, like the two of them are tragic and helpless and already gone. And maybe they are, she thinks. Maybe they are, and she slides her fingers loosely around him.

She’s been fine for three years.

Jack’s fingers are clumsy with the button on her jeans and she doesn’t help him. It isn’t right that everything can be ruined over the course of a handful of days. It isn’t right that she was fine for three years and now she’s not. Her jeans and her panties pool around her ankles and she steps out of them with a stumble; with both hands she pushes her hair back off her face and Jack stares.

Jack’s eyes are dark and there are more lines around them than she remembers. She doesn’t remember him being this strong, this direct, but that’s foolish of her. She thinks of the Hydra, she thinks of chains and the sweeping rush of water. She thinks of glass and glass and hand to hand behind the glass. His eyes bore into hers and he takes a step forward. His hand finds her hip and it’s not like last time, it’s not gentle, he grips to bruise and just as rough, just as possessive, he crooks his wrist and slides two fingers inside of her.

(“You came back for you,” she said. 

“You came back for you.”)

The angle is awkward and all wrong. His fingers feel thick inside of her and she gasps. She gasps and then Jack gasps, the sound heavy and just above her ear, and she wonders if it’s out of pride, if he’s proud, if the fact that he can get her wet between her legs is enough to make him gasp, make him hard. He twists his wrist, she bites her lip, and with the other hand against the curve of her right hip he pushes her back and back until she sits half-perched on the lip of the sink. Jack moves in closer, his fingers still, unmoving, inside of her and when he slides one leg between hers (spread wide open and she still has yet to think  _this is a bad idea this is a terrible idea_ ) the only barrier between her cunt and his cock is his hand cupping her. And then there isn’t even that.

Both of his hands bracket her hips – a parenthesis, she thinks, how appropriate – and pull her toward him. Her toes skim the floor first and then she draws her legs up, wraps them around his waist, her kneecaps pressed against either side of his ribcage. 

Jack does not ask her if it’s okay. Jack doesn’t ask her if this is what she wants, if she’s sure. He doesn’t stop and step away. He doesn’t sigh and run a hand along the back of his neck and tell her everything she will be telling herself in one hour’s time, the second this is over.

Instead he slicks himself between her legs and pushes in. 

Her gasp or moan or whimper, whatever needy noise she was about to make, catches stillborn in the back of her throat but she does not close her eyes. They do not kiss either. Jack moves his hips roughly and his cock hurts, Jack hurts, Juliet hurts, and she slams her own hips up to meet him over and over again. There is the sound of the slap of skin to skin and Jack’s mouth rests against her cheek, her eyelashes dust against his face.

She clings to him. Juliet clings to Jack.

(“I came back here because I was trying to save you,” he said).

She comes first and she might hate him a little more, hate him a little less for it – she can’t decide. Her body is racked with frightening shudders and she slips a little along the sink, she buries her face in the crook of his neck and that’s when he finally says her name –

“Juliet.”

Jack pulls out before he comes. He pumps once with his hand and then her hand joins his and he says her name again. Juliet closes her eyes.

Her fingers are wet with him and there is a smear of his come near the hem of her shirt. Jack breathes heavy. He grabs the towel off the floor and wraps it around his hips, again.

She doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything. The bathroom is still humid and damp. It smells of soap and him and her. Jack looks to the floor and Juliet looks to Jack.

“That was…we shouldn’t have done that,” Jack finally says.

Juliet is not surprised. She steps away from the sink.

She aches.

 

 

 

(“I needed you,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said).

 

 

 

 _fin._


End file.
